Making space for our grief on campus: SFU’s Ecological Chaplaincy project hosts community grief shrine

In today's society we often suppress or hide our grief. SFU's Ecological Chaplain Jason Brown is hoping to change that by bringing grief out into the open to normalize the experience.

This week, members of the SFU community are invited to take a moment to honour their personal or ecological loss at a new temporary grief shrine.

Starting on November 20th through the 21st, the shrine will be in the northeast corner of the Academic Quadrangle between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.. Anyone who stops by will be greeted by Brown, who is there to offer support and walk them through one of a handful of ways they can reflect on their feelings of loss and pay tribute to a loved one or something in nature that they’re grieving, whether it’s by leaving a photo, a memento, a letter, a flower or a simple ribbon.

The Ecological Chaplaincy program was developed by the Faculty of Environment and SFU’s Multifaith Centre last year to provide spiritual support to members of the SFU community experiencing anxiety and grief related to the global climate crisis. Since the program’s official launch in January 2024, Brown has led climate cafés, a forest walk and a climate pilgrimage. He has also collaborated on events with the SFU Library and student climate activism club SFU350.

By hosting the grief shrine and opening it up to not just ecological, but all types of loss, Brown aims to create a safe space on campus that allows people to come together to acknowledge and express their grief.

 “To honour our grief is to let the seeds we have buried rise rooted in the loamy soil of these dark times and to grow,” he writes in a recent editorial on the Faculty of Environment website. “And like a forest, we cannot grow in isolation.”

Learn more about the Ecological Chaplaincy project and sign up for the mail list here.